


The Touch of Dust

by octopus_fool



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Birds, Dwarven Rings of Power, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 12:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16408559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopus_fool/pseuds/octopus_fool
Summary: Things have the habit of appearing in masses around Thráin. It's an annoyance, but he learns to make the most of it.





	The Touch of Dust

Thráin hated cleaning. He had hated it as a child when his Amad made him help her, and he hated it now. The broom never felt as natural in his hands as an axe and he hated the peculiar feeling of a slightly used dust cloth. And now he had put himself into this situation himself. Usually, whenever he and Hulda negotiated the chores, he volunteered for other things. Hulda didn’t mind this chore and was quite happy to leave the dishes and spinning to him instead. 

But then that ridiculous stray rock had hit Hulda on the arm last week. Gróin had set her arm and told her it would most likely heal without leaving permanent injury – if she did not exert it. So now Thráin had decided to let Thorin have more responsibilities in governing the settlement while he had taken over most of the housework, including the cleaning. And he hated it. 

He tried not to shudder at the slightly chalky feeling of the dust cloth in his hand. Hulda had assured him it was clean, but these things never felt clean. He wished he could have started with sweeping and wiping the floor, but he knew he would have to do that all over again once he did dust the mantelpiece and their cupboards and shelves. 

And experimental wipe on the mantelpiece only revealed how much dust had gathered. Thráin sighed. No wonder this had to be done every week. He set to work, the dust cloth drawing traces in the dust on the mantelpiece. No matter how hard Thráin scrubbed and wiped, he only seemed to be succeeding in amassing little piles of dust where there hadn’t been any. He glanced at the dust covering his ring, wondering if he should have taken it off before he started cleaning. But then again, it had survived rock falls, wartime, smith work and dragons without getting as much as a single scratch, so a little housework should be fine. 

Finally, Thráin cursed and went outside to shake out the dust cloth. Great clouds of dust billowed in the cool late autumn breeze as he shook it. Thráin shook it again and again, thumping it against a piece of wood, but the clouds of dust didn’t become any smaller. Thráin wondered at the amounts of dust that had accumulated on the mantelpiece and had barely been visible before he started cleaning.

Eventually, he decided that the dust clouds from the cloth were getting slightly smaller and went inside again to resume his work. He drew traces on the mantelpiece before deciding there must be something about the stone that attracted dust. It never looked dusty when Hulda cleaned. Perhaps he should wait until she returned home and ask her what trick she used. He could get started on the shelves instead. Just to be safe, Thráin fetched a different duster.  
Clouds of dust billowed and dust bunnies formed as Thráin attacked the shelves. He had never truly appreciated the work Hulda put into this. She always seemed to spend a few minutes on dusting and less than an hour on sweeping and wiping the floor, while he had been wiping at the dust for at least an hour and made no progress. If you were being generous.

Dust covered his clothes and burned in his eyes. When he walked, he left dusty footsteps on the dusty floor. He had attempted to at least clean away the cobwebs under the ceiling, but what had looked like five cobwebs at most turned out to be at least five hundred. They clung to his hair and stretched between his head and his arms. He would have to ask Oín for something to drive spiders out. This was truly getting out of hand.

“What happened?” Hulda asked, standing in the doorway with wide eyes.

“I’m cleaning.”

“Yes, but what happened before that? Was there a cave-in somewhere? Did you try to sweep the chimney?”

Thráin scowled. “No, I just started cleaning. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

He wiped at the mantelpiece feebly and a cloud of dust drifted to the ground, where it settled in a small mound.

“Would you please set down that duster? Dusting is supposed to make it better, not worse.”

Thráin shrunk. “I know. I’m trying my best, really.”

“I know, but if anything, I’d say the dust is getting more the harder you try. Just set down the duster, I’m sure Thorin and Dís will be willing to help clean this up and perhaps take over cleaning until my arm is fully healed.”

Thráin nodded reluctantly. He hated to admit defeat, but it was probably for the best. Besides, he was looking forward to a nice bath.

 

Thwap!

The snowball hit Thráin on the back of his head and he spun around to retaliate. Dís quickly ducked behind a tree, laughing as his snowball only left a white mark on the trunk. 

She was getting too old for this, not just because she was nearly of age, but mostly because she was far too good at this for Thráin to stand a chance against her. Still, they had all needed the opportunity to step away from their everyday duties and the snow that had fallen that night had just the right consistency to form snowballs. 

Thwap!

Another snowball, this time from the side. Thorin had snuck up on him while he waited for Dís to make a mistake. Thráin flung the snowball he was holding at the blur of motion he saw from the corner of his eye. This time he hit his mark and Thorin howled in complaint as some of the snow trickled into the nape of his jacket.

Thráin heard Dís laughing from behind her tree. Then he was hit by an armful of snow from behind.

“Hey, I thought you were supposed to be on my side!” He complained when he was able to stop gasping at the cold.

Hulda cackled. “You’re naive if you thought I’d stick to the rules. It is far too amusing to see you covered in snow to miss the opportunity!”

He bent down to grab an armful of snow to retaliate, but in that moment, another load of snow hit him, Dís having seen her chance. Thráin stumbled to the side and fell into the soft snow just as Thorin dumped his armful on him.

The snowdrift Thráin had landed in was deeper than he had expected and his world briefly went white from the amount of snow Thorin had dropped on him. He spluttered and hurried to clear the snow from his face. He flailed about trying to stand up, but he seemed to be swimming in snow. He struggled to reach the ground to get some traction, but for some reason, he couldn’t. If it had been possible, he would have said the snow was getting more even though it had stopped falling that morning. Luckily, he didn’t seem to sink further into it and when his family realized his predicament, they quickly pulled him out of the drift. 

 

It was a few weeks later when Thráin was trying to clean the chimney that Thráin realised that there was really something strange going on. He pulled bucket after bucket of ashes out of the chimney, when they usually had all the ashes out after a three buckets at most. 

He had gotten Dís to help him after a while and when he had sat down for a brief pause, she finally managed to finish cleaning the chimney.

When he was scrubbing his fingers and the ring on them clean, he suddenly remembered something his father had said to him. 

“Sometimes, I let the coins run through my fingers and when they clink back onto the floor, the pile is larger than it was before. It’s the Ring, that’s what it is. It needs gold to breed gold.”

Back then, he had chalked it up to his father’s growing confusion. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

 

“Please don’t think I’m going mad,” Thráin said to Hulda that evening. “But I think I have an idea what might be going on.”

He told her his theory that his ring was behind the instances of things multiplying in his presence. 

To his relief, Hulda didn’t laugh. 

“Well, I say you should do the baking tomorrow. We’ll see how much bread we’ll get with the help of your ring, if that is really what’s going on here.”

 

So the next day, Thráin started measuring out the baking ingredients. He measured out the flour, the sugar, the water, the spices and then he started kneading. He kneaded and kneaded and after a while, he put some of the dough into a different bowl and kneaded some more. All the time, his grin kept growing.

When Hulda came into the kitchen a while later, Thráin stood in the middle of countless bowls, trays and stacked breads, his face spread into the biggest grin she had seen on his face in quite a while.

“How much bread do you think the entire settlement needs? Do you think this is enough?”

Hulda laughed and did a quick count. 

“I think a few more and we should be set.”

 

Thráin didn’t mind having baker being added to the long list of functions he now fulfilled. It also lowered the settlement’s expenses for food considerably, and the bread he baked with a fraction of the usual ingredients was still as filling as any other bread. 

It quickly became second nature to Thráin to put his ring somewhere safe before he cleaned, but usually, his family prefered to clean just in case he did forget. Thráin couldn’t claim he minded. He never plucked a goose without removing the ring first. Occasionally, on the rare occasions he did have a moment to lean back and relax, Thráin forgot and swatted at a fly. Hulda was always torn between laughing and scolding when she returned home to find him surrounded by an entire swarm of flies. 

In short, the ring could be quite useful and Thráin knew how to work around the drawbacks.

 

It really wasn’t supposed to be an issue, especially not when he was on this important quest, the one he felt obliged to attempt. It was all going perfectly well, except perhaps that he hadn’t quite figured out what exactly to do about that obnoxious dragon at the end of the journey. And now this happened. He just hadn’t been counting on stupid birds.

Alright, Thráin had been quite charmed when that first bird showed up, fluttering around until it sat down on his hand. The sensation of tiny feet gripping his finger had him holding his breath and wondering how he could get Hulda to take a look without chasing the bird off when trying to alert her.

It was only when the second bird showed up that Thráin knew there was trouble. Because two was not a reliable number, it was the first step towards many. Too many.

Thráin gently tried to shoo off the first bird, tried to stop the second one from landing on him. But they _were_ cute, and so small and fragile, especially the third one which looked like it was only a fledgling. He just couldn’t be too rough to them or actually scare them. 

He could only hope that Hulda was the one who found him.

It was hard to believe in luck when surrounded by flocks of birds, but Hulda really was the one who found him.

“Oh, look at you!” She said, amongst tears of laughter.

“Very amusing. I’m fine, by the way, thank you for asking. Their claws are slightly uncomfortable though.”

“I’m sorry, my gem. You just look rather... well, cute like that, if you’ll excuse me for saying so.”

Thráin grimaced. “I’m afraid cute isn’t what I was going for on this quest. I don’t think being surrounded by clouds of songbirds is going to intimidate any of my opponents and I don’t think I’ll be able to get rid of them any time soon, especially since I don’t want to hurt them.”

Hulda was suddenly serious again. “I’ve said this before, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be on this quest, don’t have to go through with it.”

Thráin looked at the little yellow and black bird on his left hand. “Do you think you could get the others to stay in camp for a day without looking for me? I want to think this through and I don’t want anybody to see me like this.”

 

“I don’t like dwarves,” Beorn grumbled as Ori pushed a mouse off his hand. “They have no regard for other beings.”

Thorin glared at him. “Always good to know that the old prejudices are dead.”

“There are a few exceptions, of course,” Beorn conceeded. “A few do care about other beings, and dwarves do bake wonderful bread.”

Bilbo snorted into his milk. “Bread? Of all the things I would have expected dwarves to be good at making, bread was not one of them.”

“The ones in this area are great at it,” Beorn retorted, “and they are the only dwarves I know that respect animals, they even have a large number of birds living around their dwelling.”

“Birds?” Thorin asked. 

“Yes, birds. It might be hard for ordinary dwarves like you to believe that, but...”

“No, it’s not that. I just used to know a dwarf who was great at baking and I heard that he has a bit of a penchant for birds these days. So I was wondering if this is perhaps him.”

“Was his name Thráin? Because that is what he goes by, and his wife by Hulda. They live perhaps half a day’s travel from here, when they are not out and about with Radagast.”

Gandalf choked on the bite of honeyed bread he was chewing. “Thráin lives?! I thought he had been captured and killed on his quest long ago.”

“Which is exactly what he wanted everyone to think,” Thorin said. “I just didn’t know he was so close to this place.”

“So you knew about this?” Gandalf asked.

“Of course. My parents wouldn’t want me mourning them when there is no need to.”

“What’s that about the birds then?” Bilbo asked. “Why would a dwarf surround himself with birds?”

“That’s a good question,” Gandalf said. “I can remember Thráin being gentler than most dwarves and a bit melancholic, but I can’t remember him being overly fond of birds.”

“It’s a curious story,” Thorin replied. “My father had a strange habit of amassing things. If he picked up nuts or apples, he never picked up one or two, there were always masses. Now it’s birds. And our family does have a history of dealing with ravens, I guess that has been expanded to other birds too.”

Gandalf started chuckling. “To think that he was alive all this time, and surrounded by birds at that.”

Thorin sent Beorn a pointed look. “Now look who is looking down at caring about other creatures.”

 

Thorin tried not to let fear creep into his eyes as Azog loomed over him, his scimitar raised to deal the final blow. Even with only seconds left to live, Thorin would not give Azog that satisfaction. 

Thorin blinked as Azog’s attention shifted. There was a bird fluttering around Azog’s head, a tiny yellow and black one. It swerved away from Azog’s blow, attacked him again and was joined by an entire swarm of birds in all colors and sizes. 

Thorin drew a deep breath and inched towards where his sword lay. Together with his father and his unusual allies, this enemy could be defeated.


End file.
